Well, school is over. I got an A in Java, and some really good grades in databases and ethics, those were the better classes because I learned so much (no?), the curriculum was really good (no?), and the professors were super fantastic (no?), although I am glad to be home. It was nice to be at school and to have a lot of free time. Now I work all day, commuting with shitty roads, and walking Scuzzy, helping make dinner, and sleep. There is no time to do much of anything which kind of stinks.
I have started on the first actual version of LanCaster. The previous test (back in November) turned out kind of funny. As it may be, if you spam the network massive numbers of broadcast packets (think broadcasting a 200 MB file), the router dies! How awesome is that? Well, whats even cooler is that on a Mac, the maximum size of a UDP packet seems to be half of the maximum of Windows. And even cooler than that? Well it also seems that there are no errors or anything when receiving a packet, only sending. So that worked out well… I learned some stuff, and have come up with a new design! The new design is that computer A will send the file to computer b, which sends to c, etc. So the end transfer time to all the computers is about the same time as to one computer. Plus this design wont interfere with any of the other computers on the network that are not involved with transfers.
I have been working on a Java GUI for the app too. It actually doesn’t transfer anything yet, but it does a lot. I am using JMDNS to take advantage of zeroconf, Rendezvous, Bonjour, or the new brand of the day. The new application is completely peer to peer. There is no tracker and there is no server. It’s pure p2p. It’s super fantastic; and all those other crazy p2p programs that are not actually p2p should take note: Buzzwords are only used by dumbos who don’t have a good enough product to sell by itself.
So about work at American Greetings. I am pretty sure that I am not allowed to talk about it, although I haven’t signed any crazy NDAs or anything. Although I think I can sum it up safely by saying: Windows, C++, HP, and not planning are all not good.
Camp planning is working out quite nicely. It doesn’t look like Matt is going to be able to come unless there is a lot more enrolment, which stinks. Camp starts June 15 and if you know any 8 to 17 year old people who would like to learn anything about computers, you should have them enroll in the amazing program at Camp Fitch Computer Camp. I know the web site is really bad, but were going to work on that for next year. If you don't know much about me, this is my 9th year (6th as a counseler).